Students With Traumatic Brain Injury: The Challenge for Teachers and Schools

Challenges for Teachers & School

Brainline.org

Traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of disability among children and youth. Students returning to school with traumatic brain injuries may have an entire range of physical, cognitive, behavioral, social and emotional challenges. Exposure to education can aid in the recovery of these functions. Much as schools promote learning, recovery is a re-learning process, so it is important for educators in the school system to provide support and services to students with brain injuries.

Unfortunately, brain injury has dropped off our educators’ radar, and often goes unnoticed due to under-reporting and/or misidentification. However, more and more children, adolescents and young adults are surviving their injuries due to advances in medical technology. But students with brain injury who return to school are often at a disadvantage because they require special accommodations, supports and services of which educators have little knowledge and training. Without these educational programs and services, students with brain injuries are at greater risk for lower academic performance, failing grades and dropping out of high school. If we are to meet the challenge of educating students with brain injuries, then we need to take some major steps toward changing our national educational system.

Currently, there are 5.3 million Americans living with the effects of a long-term disability due to a brain injury, with 1.5 million sustaining a traumatic brain injury annually. Educators will admit to not knowing much about brain injury. They believe that they have not had many, if any students in their classrooms who have sustained brain injuries. This, unfortunately, is a wide-spread misconception. The epidemic of TBI in our youth has posed many problems. Effectively educating these students can only occur if educators are given appropriate supports and transitional services. By not knowing how best to support the students, teachers are liable to inhibit the cognitive recovery of their students, compounding the challenges faced by them, and failing to prepare them for adulthood.

The SYSTEM needs to change

Right now, the mission is to increase teachers’ awareness of brain injury so that they can provide effective and appropriate educational supports and transitional services for the student brain injury community. Access to this information will enable educators to provide students with improved opportunities for their futures – futures that encompass not only academic success, but also include the transition from high school into communities, businesses and higher-learning institutions.

Level 1 Change

use professional development to increase the level of competency among

educators by providing a foundation of knowledge about brain injury

Level 2 Change

expand educators’ skills to include identification and assessment of cognitive,

physical and psychosocialchallenges

Level 3 Change

train educators in the learning differences of students with brain injury